MonsterCollege™

My first internship lasted exactly one week (9 hours of work). The last day involved me visiting two different police stations before I could get out of it. I was hired to do some basic Quickbooks chores, then was basically told to commit tax fraud (direct quote from my boss: "If I have to pay taxes this year, it's your fault."). The cops were no help, because technically, no crime had been committed (yet), and I didn't want to press charges. The only reason I went to them was that my boss had left some extremely threatening messages on my phone, and I was honestly afraid to quit. Luckily, my college's internship office was extremely supportive. One of the staff even drove me over to the office where my boss worked to turn in the keys with me - now that's commitment to your students!

Things I've learned from this experience:

1) Always get a job description (preferably in writing) when beginning an internship. You have to know exactly what you're being hired to do, so when they ask you to do taxes, when you were hired to do Quickbooks, you can clearly say "No, that's not in my job description." If they fire you for that, you don't want to be working there in the first place.

2) Establish clear goals and deadlines. Make sure that the amount of work they asked you to do is doable within the timeframe you are given. If you don't think it is, speak up! Don't go into something thinking it's a semester-long internship, then have them spring a 100-hour project that's due in two weeks on you ("By the way, you need to do my taxes - here's all my receipts, they're due in two weeks!" - yeah, that happened to me).

3) Stick to your morals. This one is more personal. I wasn't comfortable doing something I felt closely resembled tax fraud. I didn't say anything at first, because I wanted the internship so badly. I learned, however, that no internship is worth sacrificing your ethics for. There will always be other internships and other opportunities, and if you can tell them in your interview about how you stood up for yourself and your morals, a good company will want you all the more for that.

4) ASK QUESTIONS! An internship is supposed to be a learning experience. If you are confused about something, speak up! A good company would much rather have to take a little time to explain something to you, than have it done incorrectly.

Has anyone else had an internship where they were asked to do something illegal (or unethical)? What did you do?

 Totes OMG- LOL- I cant even talk yet cause that was soooo crazy.

Emily- would you say its important to make a different type of resume for internships than you make for your regular entry level job resume? thanks for the advice ya'all

I had a PR internship at a large annual county event. Every year the media tries to find something wrong with the event to create a newsworthy story. One of our responsibilities as interns was to prevent the media from slandering the event.

On my first day, I was assigned to follow a news crew around to assist and make sure they stayed out of trouble. One of the warnings at orientation was to not give the media any information other than what was specified in our handbooks. We were told that interns are normally easy targets for the news crews because we forget and leak information. I was naive and didn't realize just how conniving news anchors could be until one of them started trying to get inside information from me. He offered to get me an internship at his news station if I leaked useful information. He did basically whatever he could until I had to secretly call my supervisor to inform her of the situation.

Terrible first day! However, the internship itself was a great learning experience.

I had an internship as a dolphin attendant at sea world 3 summers ago.  It sounded great and it was really informational but now I kind of am scared of dolphins because one nipped me while I was feeding them fish, lame! tuna!

wow. This is kind of scary. Honestly, i dont know what I would do in this situation.

This also gave great advice. Thanks. (:

I interned at hod dog on a stick corporate for a week, it was just so cheesy i had to leave.

CharlotteD1212 says ...

3) Stick to your morals. This one is more personal. I wasn't comfortable doing something I felt closely resembled tax fraud. I didn't say anything at first, because I wanted the internship so badly. I learned, however, that no internship is worth sacrificing your ethics for. There will always be other internships and other opportunities, and if you can tell them in your interview about how you stood up for yourself and your morals, a good company will want you all the more for that . . . .

 

Has anyone else had an internship where they were asked to do something illegal (or unethical)? What did you do?

 I totally agree with this!  You have to remember morality before making decisions about what to say or do during internships.  Before I did my student teaching, I knew that working as a public school teacher could be risky.  I read up a little about more common legal issues teachers run into before my assignment just in case!  In the end, like with CharlotteD1212, it can come down to your supervising professor's willingness to rescue you!

  I had some situations where my sponsor teacher did some "shady" things in the classroom.  Students kept reporting to me that anytime I left to go make a few copies or whatever, he was "yelling" at them.  A few said, "We don't like him - he's mean."  I thought they were lying until one day on my way back from the copy room.  I could hear him yelling at the class at the top of his lungs while I was down the hall!  My last day he threw a student out of class, sent them to the hall, and then threatened him.  (Unfortunately for him a Vice Principal heard him threaten the student!  The teacher is expecting a 3 day suspension the first of the year!)

  My advice is that the minute you see something "shady" or if you're asked to do anything you think's illegal - call your university supervisor immediately!  Tell them the first time anything happens and start logging it somewhere.  That way you've started a "CYA" (Cover Your Anatomy! LOL!) file.  That way your supervisors at the internship can't blame it on the "dumb intern."  (Some do that.)

This is for interns now and future interns if you are working for company that is family owned watch out , As times get tighter . If you are

planning to work for a company like the one above check it out first.